College: PhD in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis in Health, Exercise and Sport Sciences

Dr. Nich Pertuit is the director of the Health and Human Performance department at Rocky Mountain College. He specializes in Human Performance and Health Behavior Change, and has been working in the teaching and performance realm for 15 years now. In 2011, Dr. Pertuit received his PhD in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis in Health, Exercise, and Sport Sciences. His dissertation focused on multi-domain generalizability of motivation for students and athletes.

Dr. Pertuit has spent his entire life focused on maximizing performance. Sometimes through teaching as professor, which he has done Rocky Mountain College, the University of Texas, and Montana State University-Billings; sometimes as a consultant, where he has worked with over fifteen university sports programs, including Stanford University, Cal Poly Pomona, the University of Texas, and the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, to name a few; and sometimes as a professional athlete, where he spent over six years in the highest level of indoor football, the Arena Football League, and set several records as a kicker, including being “Kicker of the Year” and the only kicker named in “The Top 50 Players of Arena Football” in 2014.

Since moving back to Billings full time in the Fall of 2014 to be with his wife Laura Hollister, Dr. Pertuit has helped build the first every Health and Human Performance mobile lab at Rocky Mountain College. He also helped rewrite the curriculum for the Health and Human Performance department at RMC, with an emphasis on increasing the amount experiential learning, lab time with cutting edge technology, and hands-on experiences for all students. He is actively involved in creating environmental changes in his community, and is a key partner with several businesses in town to optimize their performance by focusing on health behaviors and regaining an internal locus of control over their lives.

As a pedagogist by trade, Dr. Pertuit is on a never-ending quest to equip others with the tools they need to bring out their best in every task they take on, and he lives this out by constantly trying to improve himself as well. He believes that, “Health is behavior, and that education is the greatest motivator to affect behavior.” However, knowledge is only one part of education. Experience, motivation, mindset, perspective analysis,…all of these and more must also be included in proper education.

Nich loves soccer, animals, Montana, reading, and enjoying life. His wife, Laura, and him are expecting their first baby girl this year, and love spending time in the mountains with their dog, Koda.